I want to work in the US (Mother is Naturalized US Citizen)

My mother recently (within the last 2 months) became a naturalized US citizen. she married an American 6 years ago and finally got her citizenship, passport, the works.

she lives in Florida, I live in Ottawa, Canada - and have been wanting to move down there to work for years (after doing my graduate degree at the university of florida in 2001).

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for me? I went through the INS website and to be honest, found it very confusing and daunting - was hoping someone could explain in lamens terms?

I'm 31 and married, no children.

been looking for jobs online (monster, brainhunter, etc) but all postings specifically say you need to be authorized to work in the US - so how do I do this? is there an easier / harder way?

any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

She needs to file an I-130 for you, these are the instructions: http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/I-130instr.pdf

I think you'd be in third preference (adult married children of US citizens), the visa bulletin says they're currently processing applications received in August 2000. However that doesn't tell you a fat lot because they don't process them at the same speed they received them, i.e. you can't take today's date and minus off August 2000 and work out how long you'd be waiting.

Some years they process 15 months worth in a year, some years they process 8 months worth in a year. Pot luck really. But you'd definitely be waiting at least four or five years, probably longer, for the visa number to come up.

Bear in mind that's just for the petition to be approved and a visa number to be allocated, then you actually have to apply which at the moment takes the best part of the year. By then of course it might take years or it might take a couple of weeks for all we know, impossible to tell.

More of a retirement plan really.

My suggestion would be to get your mom to file the I-130 ASAP, then see about trying to get into the US some other way, because at least you will know that at some point a visa number will come up and you can adjust status to permanent resident.

How you get in another way is an interesting question.